


The Heist Before Christmas

by Azar



Category: Lone Gunmen
Genre: Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/pseuds/Azar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a much-anticipated holiday toy turns out to have a sinister purpose, it's up to the Gunmen to warn the unsuspecting parents of America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heist Before Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, thanks to DebC for doing beta duties on this one.

"What can we do for you, Yves?" Byers asked politely as he opened the door to admit their sometime rival.

"Yeah, what is it this time?" Langly contributed snidely. "Public humiliation, or public humiliation with a side of 'we do all the work and you take all the credit'?"

Yves stepped inside. As usual, she was dressed in form-fitting black from head to toe, with a low-cut top and skin tight leather pants. It was an outfit designed to make men's toes curl, along with certain other body parts, and to the Gunmen's eternal shame, it invariably succeeded, no matter how high their antipathy towards her was running at any given moment.

She pursed full lips into a pout and turned the full power of it on poor, hapless Langly. "Really, Langly, haven't I amply proved my good will by now?"

"No," three voices chorused in unison, including Frohike, who had just stepped into the room. He and Langly both looked adamantly suspicious, but the look on Byers' face was far more sheepish.

Yves shrugged. "Fair enough. Regardless, gentlemen, I need your help."

"Help with what?" Byers asked, closing the door and moving into the room to stand with his two colleagues.

In answer, Yves held up a toy catalog and pointed to a disgustingly pretty doll on the pink-tinted cover, a doll with perfect blue eyes and flawless blonde curls. "This, boys, is Gabby Giggles, believed by market researchers to be the hot item of the holiday season. I need you to help me acquire one."

"Can't you just go to the store and buy one like a normal person?" Langly demanded. "Or is that too mundane for your tastes?"

She laid the catalog down on the keyboard of one of their many computers. "Unfortunately, the doll will not be released until the first of December. I need one before that."

Frohike snorted. "Sorry, Yves, we don't do corporate espionage."

She ignored him. "The doll is equipped with voice recognition software as well as a pre-programmed vocabulary of phrases that can be triggered by certain keywords which the child ‘teaches' it to respond to when the doll is first purchased. That is all in the advertisement. What parents aren't being told, however, is that this doll also has within her a digital recording device sensitive enough to record every conversation taking place within the house and transmit it back to a designated location by means of the nearest mobile phone beacon."

Byers and Langly froze. Frohike leaped forward and snatched the catalog off the desk, staring at the cover in wide-eyed shock.

Yves glanced between them with a satisfied expression on her face. "I presume I have your attention now?"

"Undivided," Frohike breathed, still staring at the picture of the doll. "So what you're saying is...Chatty Cathy here was designed to spy on every house with a kid? For who, Big Brother?"

"Essentially, yes. As for whom, I don't know: perhaps the Federal government, but more likely the toy company." She pointed to the logo at the bottom of the page, a blue five pointed star with the word "Toytel" printed across it in gold.

"That's obscene," Byers contributed in a horrified voice, stepping to Frohike's side to look over his shoulder. "Using children to spy on their parents? It's like living in Nazi Germany or Communist China."

"Precisely why I thought you might find this of interest." She smiled. "All I want is the doll: the story is yours. So, do I have your cooperation, gentlemen?"

The three men looked at each other.

"If we're going to pull of a heist like this, we'll need to get the layout of the place first," Frohike ruminated.

Yves agreed with another smooth smile. "So, which one of you boys wants to volunteer to be my husband?"

* * *

"This is so cool," Jimmy enthused as he and Yves climbed out of the car in the parking lot of Kid Kingdom. "I haven't been to this many toy stores in one day since I was a kid."

Frohike's incredulous voice crackled over the earwigs in both their ears. "You're kidding me. You hit up twenty toy stores in one day before?"

"Sure." Jimmy's expression turned nostalgic. "When I was seven, we went to visit my grandma and grandpa Bond for Christmas. There was this GI Joe action figure I really, _really_ wanted, but no one had it because it was _really_ popular. So, Grandma took me to every toy store in town until we found one that had one left." He let out a deep sigh. "Grandma was always doing things like that for people. She was my role model, at least until you guys came along."

There was a long silence on the other end before Byers finally broke it with a polite, "That's a very sweet story, Jimmy."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Frohike muttered.

"Hey, forget about the trip down memory lane: can we get back to business here?" Langly interjected irritably.

Jimmy opened his mouth to protest, but Yves stopped him with a sympathetic hand on his arm. "Yes, of course," she answered the boys in the van. "We'll start with the outside of the building."

"Check out those turrets," Langly suggested. "What do you want to bet they've got security cameras in them."

"Those turrets" were part of the Vegas-like façade that transformed what had once obviously been a fairly standard warehouse into a toy palace. Red roofed and flying bright colored plastic flags, they adorned all four corners of the building, with ramparts painted to look like brick between them and an entrance with a decorative portcullis raised to allow the children--and of course, parents and their wallets--inside.

Jimmy obediently turned his eyes, complete with pinhole camera in the frame of his fake glasses, towards the two turrets at the front of the store. With only a few keystrokes, Frohike zoomed in on them. "Yep, we were right. There's a camera hidden in each of those tiny windows."

"That's good." Byers sounded relieved.

Jimmy frowned. "It is?"

Yves nodded. "It means they have a blind spot. Likely more than one."

"We can use that to our advantage," Frohike agreed. "Now, the cameras are positioned so that there's two on the front doors at all times, and at least one on the loading dock. But if we can figure out another way in, we might be able to get in and out without ever being caught on tape."

Jimmy grinned. "Cool."

"The front door seems to be a standard enough lock," Yves observed as the two of them approached the store. "I don't see any immediate evidence of electronic security."

"Access panel might not be right by the door," Langly pointed out. "Think one of you guys could sneak a peek inside the staff room?"

"We can try," was all Yves would commit to.

They were almost to the doors when Jimmy stopped cold. "Guys, they have metal detectors."

"Yeah, stupid, most stores do these days," Frohike grumbled. "What's the problem?"

"Won't they...I dunno, detect the camera or the microphone or something?"

"Relax, Jimmy," Byers assured him. "They're not actually metal detectors, otherwise your belt buckle would set them off every time you walked into a retail establishment. They're programmed to respond to the security tags on the merchandise, so no one can walk out with something without buying it and having the tag deactivated."

"Oh." Jimmy looked relieved for a moment, then frowned in confusion again. "But won't that be a problem if we—"

"We're not planning to stroll in and out through the front door, you numbskull," Langly snapped. "Besides, it's going to look a hell of a lot more suspicious if you just stand there staring at the door instead."

"Langly..." Byers chided softly.

"Much as it pains me to say, Langly does have a point," Yves admitted, slipping an arm through Jimmy's. She gave him a sympathetic smile and nodded towards the door. "Shall we?"

The wounded puppy dog look fading from his face as soon as she touched him, Jimmy returned the smile gratefully. He still hesitated, though. "Byers?"

"We wouldn't send you in there if there was any risk," the bearded gunmen promised.

Jimmy nodded before adopting a truly dreadful southern accent and drawling, "All right then, Darlin'. Let's go get little Jimmy Junior that GI Joe Aquatic Attack Launch Platform he wants for Christmas."

They entered the store to the accompaniment of muffled groans from the van.

* * *

"You have a great deal of respect for Byers, haven't you?" Yves asked as she and Jimmy wandered the aisles of the Kid Kingdom.

"Yeah, I do," Jimmy admitted. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Frohike and Langly too—"

Out in the van, Frohike rolled his eyes and Langly mimed gagging. Byers just frowned at them like the disapproving parent he often felt he was.

"—but most of the time, Byers is the only one that's nice to me." He let out a deep sigh. "I know they think I'm too dumb to notice, so it doesn't hurt. But I'm not, and it does."

All of a sudden, all noise in the van stilled, even the clack of computer keys. Awkward glances were exchanged all around; all three men looked equally sheepish for two very different reasons.

"I, ah...think Jimmy must've forgotten he was still wired," Byers suggested softly enough that the man in question hopefully wouldn't hear.

"Must have," Frohike agreed in the same low-key tone. Covering his own mike with one hand, he added, "You know we never meant to hurt the kid's feelings--"

Langly nodded.

"I know," Byers sighed. "And Jimmy does too or he wouldn't have kept it a secret."

"Too goddamned nice for his own good," Frohike agreed with a grunt. "Kinda like you."

"Yeah, but at least Byers doesn't take it personally when we call him a stuffed shirt with a Don Quixote complex," Langly insisted. Then his face drained of color and he pivoted to face the third member of the trio. "You don't, do you?"

Byers blinked wide, vaguely injured blue eyes but nevertheless promised, "No, Langly, of course I don't."

Awkward silence descended once again for a moment, before Frohike cleared his throat. All three men turned back to their respective monitors, just in time for Jimmy and Yves to pass their target: the latter still comforting the former in subdued tones.

"Stop. Stop right there," Langly blurted out suddenly. When Jimmy and Yves glanced at each other but did as requested, he added, "Okay, now go back. Look straight at the back wall." The blond gunman waved frantically at his two compatriots. "Guys, you've gotta see this..."

Crowding around the laptop on either side of him, Byers and Frohike just stared.

"That's receiving?" Frohike asked in disbelief. "There's just a curtain!"

"Most of the other stores had a door with a keypad," Byers agreed, equally shocked. "Jimmy...can you get a closer look?"

"How much closer?" Jimmy asked warily.

"Poke your head inside, if you can," Frohike suggested.

Five minutes later, Jimmy had taken a complete tour of the stock room and come back out again without running into a single employee, and come back with the news that one entire corner of the room was devoted to Gabby Giggles.

"Unbelievable," Frohike murmured, awed. "I bet half the people in there would stampede that back room if they knew what was in it."

"All the more reason we shouldn't inform them," Yves pointed out.

"Yeah, no kidding," Langly chimed in. "Not if we want to get ours."

"I still can't believe this place," Frohike repeated, bewildered. "Barely any electronic security, only one guard, ventilation easily big enough for a man to crawl through, and then not even a door between the store and the stock room? It's almost like they want to get robbed."

"Frohike, may I remind you that the first rule of larceny is never complain that the job is too easy," Yves informed them dryly.

The three men looked at each other again, this time with broad smiles on all their faces as Yves summed up what they were all thinking: "Gentlemen, I think we've found our target."

* * *

The trickiest part of the operation was timing: Kid Kingdom closed at midnight, which meant the store wouldn't be empty of employees until around one or one thirty in the morning. This in turn meant that they only had from about 2AM until sunrise to get in and out without getting caught. If everything went smoothly, they would need less than a third of that time. Considering most of their more daring heists in the past had gone anything but smoothly, however, they needed all the cushion they could get.

At 1:45, when surveillance from the parking lot of the 7-Eleven across the street revealed the last car leaving the employee parking lot, Operation Gabby Giggles officially went into action with each player moving into position.

Yves, at her own insistence, was going in with Frohike, declaring that she didn't trust him to get the doll out in one piece. Considering she was as agile as a cat burglar and that her entire wardrobe was black anyway, there was no real logical reason to deny this request. Besides, though none of them would admit it openly, it seemed like a good way to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't have something unexpected up her sleeve.

Byers, with his neatly trimmed hair and beard, looked completely out of place in the construction worker attire he'd donned: a flannel shirt with long johns underneath, worn jeans, work boots and a yellow hard hat. He would never have been able to pull it off in the daylight, but it was just dark enough out--even with the glow of the street lights--for him to make it to the electrical pole across the parking lot from the store and climb up it to the junction box without attracting undue attention.

Langly and Jimmy remained behind in the van, Langly's fingers flying over the keyboard of one of their many on-board computers. "Scarecrow to Dorothy and Toto; come in."

"Reading you loud and clear, Scarecrow," Frohike answered. "Where are the cameras?"

"They'll be in position in five...four...three...two...one...go."

Staying low, the two black-clad figures darted towards the building, heading straight for the blind spot halfway along the east wall. They reached it just as the cameras swung back around and Langly let out a low breath of relief.

"All right, we're in position," Frohike's voice crackled over the radio again. "Engaging winged monkey."

The ‘winged monkey' in question was a grabbling hook and cable, which Frohike swung up to catch on the edge of the roof. Once he was sure it was secure, he gestured to Yves. "Ladies first."

"Let me know when you get to the top and I'll cut the power," Byers' voice interjected with his usual politeness.

In the van, Jimmy frowned. "Why is he waiting until they get to the roof to cut the power? Wouldn't it have been easier to just do it first, so they wouldn't have to worry about the cameras?"

It was on the tip of Langly's tongue to say something particularly biting, but suddenly remembering Jimmy's words from earlier, he bit his tongue instead and forced out a sincere answer through gritted teeth. "Because, idi--Jimmy--if we cut the power before they get up on the roof, they wouldn't be able to see well enough to get up to the roof."

A light dawned on the other man's simple, trusting features. "Oh, okay. I get it now."

"Toto to Tin Man: we are at the yellow brick road," Frohike called down a few minutes later. "Repeat: we are at the yellow brick road."

"Understood, Toto," Byers answered. "Cutting power...now."

Immediately, the entire block went dark. Up on the roof, Frohike switched on his head-lamp and turned to Yves. "Let's just hope nobody's awake at this hour to call the power company and yell."

"You mean aside from the employees at the Seven-Eleven?" she pointed out.

Frohike shrugged, pulling a battery-powered screwdriver out of the utility belt around his waist. "Hell, I don't know about them, but if I was working the night shift at one of these twenty-four hour places, I'd treat a blackout as an excuse to go home early."

Yves made a sound vaguely resembling a muffled laugh. "Regardless, we haven't got all night."

"You don't need to tell me twice, sweetheart," was the answer as he went to work on unscrewing the mesh cover from the mouth of the ventilation system. "Scarecrow, I need that map of the Emerald City."

"I'm on it," Langly returned. A few more rapidly executed commands and a blueprint of the warehouse popped up on the screen in front of him. "God, I love the county records department. Easy to hack, and every floor plan in town on-line if you know where to look for it."

"Let's not give away all our trade secrets just yet, Scarecrow," Frohike admonished.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just get this over with already, okay? I'm freezing my butt off out here and I'd like to get some sleep tonight," Langly groused.

The cover finally came off, and Frohike climbed carefully in, dropping down onto his belly in the air duct that ran parallel to the ground, then scooting forward enough for Yves to squeeze in. She passed down the winch that would be used to lower Frohike into the store itself, then slid in after it.

"All right, we're in."

"Okay, you want to go straight ahead for about nine yards, then take the first left."

"Left? Are you sure?" Frohike asked, frowning. "Because I could've sworn when we were looking at the map earlier, it was the first turn on the right that we wanted."

"Yeah, well I'm looking at the map now, and I say it's left," was the snide reply from Langly.

Sure enough, nine yards down and to the left, the ducts opened up into one of the vents that Jimmy and Yves had seen during their tour of the store. There was an electric fan blocking the entrance, but Frohike quickly went to work on that with the screwdriver while Yves set up the winch and fastened the belay cord firmly to his waist. When the fan was unscrewed from its moorings, Frohike passed it up to Yves, who placed it on the opposite side of the vent from where she was waiting. The mesh covering this end of the vent soon followed and Frohike crawled back up with it to reposition himself for his official descent.

"It's too narrow to turn around," Yves observed of the vent. "I'll have to send you down feet first."

"Sounds good to me; last thing I need is a late night head rush," Frohike agreed easily. He positioned himself over the open vent again, and then signaled Yves to begin lowering him into the store.

He'd descended almost three feet when his feet found themselves touching a solid but springy surface of some kind. That wasn't right—there wasn't supposed to be anything but aisle under the vent they'd picked out. Before he could cry out a warning or ask for clarification, though, the "floor" under his feet collapsed. The sound of cardboard boxes tumbling down echoed through the empty store, and a heartbeat later it was joined by a dissonant chorus of parroty voices all demanding "Polly want a cracker!" in a perverse mockery of a campfire round.

Frohike swore. "Pull me up, pull me up!" he demanded in an urgent whisper.

Yves pulled him up, his feet disappearing back into the vent just as the sound of running feet and the beam of a flashlight appeared below them. Now crouched on either side of the opening, the two would-be cat burglars held their breath. When the security guard arrived a second later, he stopped to stare at the heap of talking stuffed parrots at his feet.

"Tin Man to Dorothy and Toto: what's going on? We heard a crash?" Byers' anxious voice came over the radio.

"I came down right on top of Squawkers McCaw because Numbskull over there can't read a damned map," Frohike hissed back as quietly as he could.

Langly started to retort, but Yves shushed them all: "If you don't want to get caught, gentlemen, I'd advise saving this argument for later."

A nervous silence descended then: all five, even Jimmy, holding their breath. The security guard stared at the heap of feathers and cardboard, then slowly began to swing his flashlight upwards. In another minute, he'd see the screen missing from the vent and sound the alarm.

Yves didn't give him a minute. She pulled something out of the pocket of her jacket and Frohike heard a soft "pfft" a second before the guard staggered and dropped his flashlight. He followed it to the ground a heartbeat later.

"You shot him!" Frohike exclaimed in horror.

"Relax, it's only a tranquilizer," Yves promised. "Now, we haven't much time: that small a dose won't keep him out for long."

With that motivating thought in mind, it didn't take long for first Frohike, then Yves, to lower themselves to the floor and detach from their climbing gear. "With him out, maybe we should just walk through the front door," Frohike mused as Yves bent to retrieve her tranquilizer dart from the guard's neck.

"And leave all the equipment behind?" she asked, amused.

"Well, it's not like there's fingerprints to worry about," he pointed out. This was true: they'd wiped down everything they planned to take in before they started, and even Langly and Jimmy in the van were wearing gloves. In their case, it was just more for the cold than to prevent identification.

"We don't exactly have the finances to buy a new one," Byers pointed out.

"Plus, can't the police track stuff like that to where you bought it?" Jimmy pointed out. "They do it all the time on _CSI_."

"Not to the people we buy from," Langly boasted. "Besides, this isn't television, you big do--ah...Jimmy. It's a lot easier to get away with a crime than TV would make you think."

"Nevertheless, right now, the important thing is to get the doll and get out," Yves reminded them. "It's also a great deal easier to solve a crime if the criminals in question stand around waiting to be caught."

They encountered no other major obstacles on the way back to the stock room, and nothing more serious than how to remove one doll from the pile without bringing all the others down once they got there. One toyslide was more than enough; there was no need to make the entire store look like it'd been hit by an earthquake.

Once back at their point of entry, Yves shimmied back up the rope with a lithe grace that Frohike couldn't help but watch in admiration from where, below, he was holding the rope steady.

He was jolted out of said appreciation by her wry voice; "Toto, stop staring at my ass and pass me the doll."

* * *

"Well, it's about time!" Langly exclaimed as Frohike and Yves finally reached the van. Yves had the box with the doll in it in her arms, while Frohike carried the winch slung over one shoulder. "What the hell took you so long?"

Frohike scowled at him. "Tell you what, when you've had to try to crawl through an air vent pushing that—" He gestured to the enormous pink and purple box. "—ahead of you, then you can complain about how long it takes. Until then, shut up."

Byers, having climbed down from the electrical pole when he saw the two leave the store, joined them then. "Is that her?" he asked.

"That's her," Frohike replied. "Gabby Giggles, Big Brother's little sister in the tykes' nursery."

"Great," Langly enthused. "I can't wait to get her back to headquarters and take her apart."

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

All four men pivoted at the sound of Yves' voice to stare in shock at the gun she was leveling at them with the hand not holding the box.

"Yves, what are you doing?" Byers asked, worried.

"Forget that," Frohike chimed in, in a tone of amazement. "Where the hell did she conceal a Glock in that get-up?"

Yves regarded them with a calm disdain that was sadly all too familiar to the other four. "As I've said, I can't allow you to dismantle this doll."

"I'm kinda inclined to agree," Jimmy contributed. "She's awfully pretty; it'd seem like a shame to mess that up."

"We can't publish that she's packed with surveillance equipment if we can't open her up and see it," Langly explained impatiently. He shot an accusing glare in Yves' direction. "You knew that when you told us about it."

"Langly's right," Byers agreed. "No matter what people may think of us, we are serious journalists, not hacks."

Yves smiled. "There is no surveillance equipment."

All four man stared at her, their jaws nearly hitting the snowy pavement. "But you said--"

"--exactly what I needed to in order to make you dance to my tune," she revealed, the smile turning more than a little smug. "Really, boys, you ought to realize by now that you're all dreadfully predictable."

"So what was the point of all that, then?" Frohike demanded. "Or was there not one, you just did it for laughs?"

"None of the above," she answered calmly. "Thanks to you boys, I'll be able to send my niece exactly what she wanted for Diwali without having to send it late."

The three Gunmen stood there sputtering wordlessly until finally Byers found his voice. "Wait, you mean all of this was to get us to do your holiday shopping for you?"

"Okay, that's it," Langly blurted out, his eyes narrowed angrily behind his glasses. "We're taking the doll anyway. If she's not bugged, we'll find something else to write about, like subliminal advertising or something."

He started to reach for the doll, but Yves swung the gun around until it was pointed directly at his chest. "I wouldn't advise it," she stated calmly.

He swallowed hard and took a step back.

"Now, gentlemen, I'm leaving. If you don't want to be here when our friend the security guard awakens and sounds the alarm, I'd advise you to do the same."

With that, she left, backing away to a sleek black convertible whose presence not one of them had thought to question in the deserted parking lot. Not particularly eager to get caught, the Gunmen piled back into the van.

"She played us. I can't believe she played us. Again!" Frohike fumed.

"And we let her. Again," Byers agreed with a resigned sigh.

"Seriously?" Jimmy asked, his voice surprisingly incredulous. "You mean, you guys believed her about the surveillance thing?"

Three heads turned to stare at him in wonder.

"You mean, you didn't?" Byers asked.

He shook his head. "I just thought you guys were all playing along. Being nice, y'know, because Christmas is coming and all. And isn't that something a gentleman does for a lady he likes, help her with her Christmas shopping?"

All three blushed bright scarlet, from the roots of Frohike's thinning hair to Byers' beard and the neck of Langly's t-shirt. Finally, Frohike sighed and clapped a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "You know what? The next time one of us makes fun of you for not always being the brightest crayon in the box--‘cause I'm not going to lie and say it won't happen again--you just remind us about this."

"Why should I do that?" Jimmy asked, confused.

Byers smiled ruefully. "Because, Jimmy, it'll remind us all that sometimes you see things more clearly than any of us."

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of notes about the details--Gabby Giggles is loosely based on a favorite doll I had as a child, named Julie. Kid Kingdom may or may not have once been a real place--there was a toy store decorated like a castle near my grandparents' house in St. Louis when I was little, but I don't remember the name of it and they've been out of business for years. The layout of the Kid Kingdom in the story, however, is stolen from a local Toys 'R Us and slightly exaggerated to make it easier for the guys to rob. *g*


End file.
